Anyone use monocolored commanders? Some are super powerful - Like Azami or Arcanis. People joke Ashling is just a a deck of mountains and Ashling, but jokes aside, no one plays them since drafting enough cards of one color for an EDH sized deck (59 cards, 30+ spells) is hard. Should I cut them?
I run 4-6 monocolored legends in each color, but there really isn't any chance you can make a good 1 colored deck in my Cube. I leave them there because some of the best cards are legends, but also as an options if by chance some day someone wants to give it a shot.
Anyone use monocolored commanders? Some are super powerful - Like Azami or Arcanis. People joke Ashling is just a a deck of mountains and Ashling, but jokes aside, no one plays them since drafting enough cards of one color for an EDH sized deck (59 cards, 30+ spells) is hard. Should I cut them?
Every once in a while, someone manages to carve out a mono colored deck from my edh cube. I've personally drafted Drana a couple of times, and had a really enjoyable deck. Wildfire, here on the forums, apparently gets 1-2 mono colored decks per session using his cube, so it's definitely doable.
I don't have any in the commander pool but we've had a surprising number of people draft monocolor decks (myself included). Probably 2/3 of the drafts someone goes mono and we've had monocolor decks for every color combination. I do run all the doublers which probably helps a lot since most other decks don't want them.
Anyone use monocolored commanders? Some are super powerful - Like Azami or Arcanis. People joke Ashling is just a a deck of mountains and Ashling, but jokes aside, no one plays them since drafting enough cards of one color for an EDH sized deck (59 cards, 30+ spells) is hard. Should I cut them?
Every once in a while, someone manages to carve out a mono colored deck from my edh cube. I've personally drafted Drana a couple of times, and had a really enjoyable deck. Wildfire, here on the forums, apparently gets 1-2 mono colored decks per session using his cube, so it's definitely doable.
Probably closer to 1 on average. I think I've had 2 once or twice. It's most likely when drafting with the entire Cube.
As far as including those Legends: I don't include them in my "Generals" section, which is reserved for 2 and 3 color Legends. I simply have them in their colors' appropriate sections. Many of the best monocolored generals are also awesome cards for decks of their color - Azusa, Kiki-jiki, Godo, Akroma (either), Sheoldred, Azami, etc.
This is a list of cards I wanted to put in because I like them, but couldn't. But yeah, if you want to get people to go with 1 color you probably need to slim down on the 2 and 3 color stuff quite a bit to make room.
Having dedicated support for mono color generals helps the case certainly; my cube is a normal cube that happens to have commanders set aside for when the mood strikes. I'm not sure if I'll miss the monocolored commanders since they invariably never get drafted. I'll pose the question to my group, ultimately, their input would will guide my decision.
How do they not get drafted? So many are amazing in the deck.
I'm assuming he has a dedicated generals pre-draft where you get a limited number of picks. Also possibly can't cross-contaminate the general cards into the normal pool.
But yeah, if you want to make mono-generals a possibility, I recommend most putting them in the regular cube section and simply enabling them to be an option to use as a general in place of one of your multicolored legends, rather than fighting with the multicolored legends for limited space.
Mono-colored matters cards help, but they aren't strictly necessary.
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Correct, I have my generals set aside in different sleeves. We'll normally make 3 packs of the commanders split evenly, draft them, and then decide which 3 we want to keep. The rest we put back in the box. Then we'll start drafting the cube and the 3 picked commanders guide the picks. Eventually, depending on the how the cards flow and choices, everyone has made their choice by pack 2.
How have folks who run 5-color generals experiences been with them? During a recent draft, a player selected horde of notions and proceeded to absolutely vacuum up all of the available green ramp, and this has left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. I'm wavering on whether to cut horde and child of alara before a draft this saturday.
Part of the issue might be that I do a generals-only draft phase, and picking up a 5 color dude might be too tempting a target. I'd assume that cube owners that do "generals in the main cube" might run into this problem less often.
Our players vacuum up the ramp anyway regardless if they're five colors or not. It's too good not to with no mass LD in the cube. However, I wouldn't blame the 5 color guy for wanting to fix his colors in the best way possible. Your players may need to prioritize hate drafting the ramp a bit . . . or just take the 5 color dudes out. We've found them to be okay generals, and mostly allow an easy color swap when you just aren't getting what you need, rather than a solid 5 color game plan.
Has anyone managed to get sydri, galvanic genius up and running in their cube? Is she too niche for this environment? I'm considering swapping her out of Merieke Ri Berit, to have a more generic esper commander. I cut sharuum when commander 2013 came out, feeling that the density of artifacts in edh cubes are a bit too low to support a general like that. Now I'm having the same feelings about sydri...
Thanks!
EDIT: I am currently using sydri, zur, and oloro for my esper group.
When Sydri came out, I looked at her as an alternative to Sharuum as an artifact general, but decided it wasn't a great idea. I looked at my Cube contents and realized that I've only got a handful of artifacts it's actually really good for her to animate - most artifacts are either mana rocks (which you usually want to be tapping for mana), equipment (which is better attached to guys), or self-sacrificing (Wayfarer's Bauble, Nevinyrral's Disk, and such). There's a handful of decent targets like Eldrazi Monument and Akroma's Memorial, but only a handful. There's also a fairly low number of actual artifact creatures to target with her second ability, which makes her not very useful overall. Sharuum, on the other hand, can recur your Bauble effects or equipment/rocks that get swept for great value, in addition to just durdling Wurmcoil Engine all day long.
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I cut sharuum a while ago for lack of reanimation action (and feeling somewhat guilty about the combo abuse potential), but I'll put her back into the consideration bracket. Thanks for the reply.
I have Sydri as one of my 2 Esper generals (Oloro is the other). I had Sharuum in there, but she was either too good or not good enough when played - I'm always looking for a general that connects to the decks they helm without being so over the top strong that people skip other generals and colors to play that card.
When played she usually helps break up stalemates and clears problematic artifacts when people wrath.
She is not amazing, but she is a good deck-greaser.
Folks using conspiracies in their edh cube, are you enforcing that a player must still have an even X cards in their deck, with conspiracies not counting as MD cards? OR do conspiracies count has MD cards, even though they are never shuffled or drawn?
I'm starting lean on conspiracies not counting towards the 60-66 card decks I enforce. Not that I'm running that many conspiracies in the first place, but the fact that they don't cost mana and are in play immediately makes me want to mitigate their advantage by forcing the player to run a "full" edh deck in addition.
Thanks!
EDIT: I guess I'd have the same question about hero's path cards, because the recent thread on those has gotten me a bit interested in trying out a few of the less broken versions of those.
Folks using conspiracies in their edh cube, are you enforcing that a player must still have an even X cards in their deck, with conspiracies not counting as MD cards? OR do conspiracies count has MD cards, even though they are never shuffled or drawn?
I'm starting lean on conspiracies not counting towards the 60-66 card decks I enforce. Not that I'm running that many conspiracies in the first place, but the fact that they don't cost mana and are in play immediately makes me want to mitigate their advantage by forcing the player to run a "full" edh deck in addition.
Thanks!
EDIT: I guess I'd have the same question about hero's path cards, because the recent thread on those has gotten me a bit interested in trying out a few of the less broken versions of those.
I treat them as cards outside of the deck.
For one, having them reduce decksize COULD be seen as a positive, as you draw your bomby cards more often.
But mostly that's how they work. The Hidden Agenda ones especially are more like specific-card modifiers than actual cards themselves.
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Thanks for the reply. I'm considering giving my cube a goodly haircut after Comm 2014, and at the same time am thinking about transitioning all conspiracy and hero's path cards to a lore seeker exclusive pack, complete with different sleeves. That way it doesn't take much explaining to the players to keep the cards separate from the main deck. Also, if my players aren't in to conspiracies or heroes path stuff, we can just pull a standard pack of 15 from the cube, as lore seeker usually stipulates.
*Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker: With the new addition of commander Planewalkers, I decided to put Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker as the Grix General. My group likes the idea and the results have been favorable - fun, competitive and unique.
**Yore-Tiller Nephilim: I honestly don't think any of the current Jeskai generals are any good, especially in the cube. So, I put in Yore. At first there was some hesitation from my playgroup that he would be OP, but we quickly found out he was pretty fair and actually fun.
***Karametra, God of Harvests: Im of the opinion this is the best G/W commander to date. So I'm running her now. pretty easy switch for me.
Conspiracy:
I think I touched on this in another thread but basically most of the actual conspiracy card type cards are either overpowered for cube or underpowered. There's no middle ground with the exception of Power Play which I run. Power Play is always in the draft pool and is a good way to determine who goes first. Otherwise, I added Agent of Acquisitions and Cogwork Librarian.
How do you like having 1 general per guild/shard/wedge? I'm waaay to indecisive not to run the 3 per in my own cube, even if a couple of the color combos are still a bit shaky.
I think I ask this practically every time you post, is your cube posted somewhere, like cubetutor?
How do you like having 1 general per guild/shard/wedge? I'm waaay to indecisive not to run the 3 per in my own cube, even if a couple of the color combos are still a bit shaky.
I think there's a clear power level when it comes to Generals in EDH and I believe the list I posted above is pretty close to that with the obvious exceptions. I've always been a power player (I like to play with the best/strongest cards) so naturally I'd choose those for my commanders. Now, setting my spikeness aside, because I usually host the cube session at my house, I'll randomly break out a pile of 100+ generals from every color combination and ask someone to choose the generals for that draft. I was even thinking of using only multicolored planeswalker for commanders draft one time - you know, for science.
I think I ask this practically every time you post, is your cube posted somewhere, like cubetutor?
-D
My cube is not up....yet. I've had quite a few requests to put it up, so I may do it soon. It just so tedious. Do you know of an easy way to post it ?
I think you can just dump all the cards, one per line, without quantities, into a txt file, and you can upload that to cubetutor. As long as your spelling and commas are in the right spots, it should dump all the cards into their format. From there you can adjust cmc and color identity as you see fit.
Has anyone managed to get sydri, galvanic genius up and running in their cube? Is she too niche for this environment? I'm considering swapping her out of Merieke Ri Berit, to have a more generic esper commander. I cut sharuum when commander 2013 came out, feeling that the density of artifacts in edh cubes are a bit too low to support a general like that. Now I'm having the same feelings about sydri...
Thanks!
EDIT: I am currently using sydri, zur, and oloro for my esper group.
It's a very new cube so it hasn't been playtested much. Obviously Oloro is fantastic. Sharuum and Sydri both felt like they'd really require constructed decks. The problem with artifact-centric commanders is that you're competing with the whole table for cards. Not everyone will take your favorite red card, but everyone will take Solemn Simulacrum. Also, my cube has 100 of each color, 100 colorless, 100 lands, and 100 2-color cards (10 for each guild). Colorless includes a few eldrazi, so artifacts make up less than 1/8 of the cards you're going to see.
I think you can just dump all the cards, one per line, without quantities, into a txt file, and you can upload that to cubetutor. As long as your spelling and commas are in the right spots, it should dump all the cards into their format. From there you can adjust cmc and color identity as you see fit.
Thanks. I have it in an excel spreadsheet, so it shouldn't be too hard.
Has anyone managed to get sydri, galvanic genius up and running in their cube? Is she too niche for this environment? I'm considering swapping her out of Merieke Ri Berit, to have a more generic esper commander. I cut sharuum when commander 2013 came out, feeling that the density of artifacts in edh cubes are a bit too low to support a general like that. Now I'm having the same feelings about sydri...
Thanks!
EDIT: I am currently using sydri, zur, and oloro for my esper group.
It's a very new cube so it hasn't been playtested much. Obviously Oloro is fantastic. Sharuum and Sydri both felt like they'd really require constructed decks. The problem with artifact-centric commanders is that you're competing with the whole table for cards. Not everyone will take your favorite red card, but everyone will take Solemn Simulacrum. Also, my cube has 100 of each color, 100 colorless, 100 lands, and 100 2-color cards (10 for each guild). Colorless includes a few eldrazi, so artifacts make up less than 1/8 of the cards you're going to see.
This is correct, which is why I've inevitably ran with Oloro, although I'm also a fan of Sen Triplets
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Every once in a while, someone manages to carve out a mono colored deck from my edh cube. I've personally drafted Drana a couple of times, and had a really enjoyable deck. Wildfire, here on the forums, apparently gets 1-2 mono colored decks per session using his cube, so it's definitely doable.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
Probably closer to 1 on average. I think I've had 2 once or twice. It's most likely when drafting with the entire Cube.
As far as including those Legends: I don't include them in my "Generals" section, which is reserved for 2 and 3 color Legends. I simply have them in their colors' appropriate sections. Many of the best monocolored generals are also awesome cards for decks of their color - Azusa, Kiki-jiki, Godo, Akroma (either), Sheoldred, Azami, etc.
I try to avoid generals that are excessively mono-color dependent like Omnath, Locus of Mana, though I do run Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed simply for his unique effect.
It also helps if you add a bit of monocolored support. I don't dedicate a TON of it, but there are a few cards in the colorless sections and in B, W, and R that push you towards monocolor:
Caged Sun
Gauntlet of Power
Gauntlet of Might
Koth of the Hammer
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
Emeria, the Sky Ruin
Crypt Ghast
Nirkana Revenant
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This is a list of cards I wanted to put in because I like them, but couldn't. But yeah, if you want to get people to go with 1 color you probably need to slim down on the 2 and 3 color stuff quite a bit to make room.
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I'm assuming he has a dedicated generals pre-draft where you get a limited number of picks. Also possibly can't cross-contaminate the general cards into the normal pool.
But yeah, if you want to make mono-generals a possibility, I recommend most putting them in the regular cube section and simply enabling them to be an option to use as a general in place of one of your multicolored legends, rather than fighting with the multicolored legends for limited space.
Mono-colored matters cards help, but they aren't strictly necessary.
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Part of the issue might be that I do a generals-only draft phase, and picking up a 5 color dude might be too tempting a target. I'd assume that cube owners that do "generals in the main cube" might run into this problem less often.
Thanks!
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
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Thanks!
EDIT: I am currently using sydri, zur, and oloro for my esper group.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
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"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
When played she usually helps break up stalemates and clears problematic artifacts when people wrath.
She is not amazing, but she is a good deck-greaser.
WUBRGPauper Battle BoxWUBRG ... and why I am not a fan of Wayne Reynolds' Illustrations.
I'm starting lean on conspiracies not counting towards the 60-66 card decks I enforce. Not that I'm running that many conspiracies in the first place, but the fact that they don't cost mana and are in play immediately makes me want to mitigate their advantage by forcing the player to run a "full" edh deck in addition.
Thanks!
EDIT: I guess I'd have the same question about hero's path cards, because the recent thread on those has gotten me a bit interested in trying out a few of the less broken versions of those.
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
I treat them as cards outside of the deck.
For one, having them reduce decksize COULD be seen as a positive, as you draw your bomby cards more often.
But mostly that's how they work. The Hidden Agenda ones especially are more like specific-card modifiers than actual cards themselves.
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"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
Guild:
Jared
AGGIV
Vish Kal
Niv 2.0
Oona
Karametra, God of Harvests***
Zegana
Runic
Karavek
Gisela
Shard:
Mimeoplasm
Oloros
Wanderer
Ghaves
Tariel
Derevi
Marath
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker *
Prossh
Yore-Tiller Nephilim**
*Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker: With the new addition of commander Planewalkers, I decided to put Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker as the Grix General. My group likes the idea and the results have been favorable - fun, competitive and unique.
**Yore-Tiller Nephilim: I honestly don't think any of the current Jeskai generals are any good, especially in the cube. So, I put in Yore. At first there was some hesitation from my playgroup that he would be OP, but we quickly found out he was pretty fair and actually fun.
***Karametra, God of Harvests: Im of the opinion this is the best G/W commander to date. So I'm running her now. pretty easy switch for me.
Conspiracy:
I think I touched on this in another thread but basically most of the actual conspiracy card type cards are either overpowered for cube or underpowered. There's no middle ground with the exception of Power Play which I run. Power Play is always in the draft pool and is a good way to determine who goes first. Otherwise, I added Agent of Acquisitions and Cogwork Librarian.
I think I ask this practically every time you post, is your cube posted somewhere, like cubetutor?
-D
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
I think there's a clear power level when it comes to Generals in EDH and I believe the list I posted above is pretty close to that with the obvious exceptions. I've always been a power player (I like to play with the best/strongest cards) so naturally I'd choose those for my commanders. Now, setting my spikeness aside, because I usually host the cube session at my house, I'll randomly break out a pile of 100+ generals from every color combination and ask someone to choose the generals for that draft. I was even thinking of using only multicolored planeswalker for commanders draft one time - you know, for science.
My cube is not up....yet. I've had quite a few requests to put it up, so I may do it soon. It just so tedious. Do you know of an easy way to post it ?
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
In my EDH cube, I run Merieke Ri Berit, Ertai, the Corrupted, Dromar, the Banisher and Oloro, Ageless Ascetic for Esper.
It's a very new cube so it hasn't been playtested much. Obviously Oloro is fantastic. Sharuum and Sydri both felt like they'd really require constructed decks. The problem with artifact-centric commanders is that you're competing with the whole table for cards. Not everyone will take your favorite red card, but everyone will take Solemn Simulacrum. Also, my cube has 100 of each color, 100 colorless, 100 lands, and 100 2-color cards (10 for each guild). Colorless includes a few eldrazi, so artifacts make up less than 1/8 of the cards you're going to see.
Thanks. I have it in an excel spreadsheet, so it shouldn't be too hard.
This is correct, which is why I've inevitably ran with Oloro, although I'm also a fan of Sen Triplets